


binary star

by anamnesisUnending



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, I know I have no canon evidence but I'm a simple gay and I love that dynamic, Pre-Relationship, Rivals to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 05:26:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17522735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamnesisUnending/pseuds/anamnesisUnending
Summary: Buddy and Vespa have been falling into each other's orbit for a long time.--The aftermath of a heist.





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Buddy can hear every hitch in Vespa’s breathing, even across the room in her bed, as Vespa sits on the counter by the bathroom sink, stitching up her wound. She can see through the doorway, reflected in the mirror, the deep, jagged line of it on her left shoulder, starting at her sternum and running along underneath her collarbone. She winces as Vespa pierces the needle through it again, Vespa, with her jaw tense and her eyes flickering closed, making no sound but for the sharpness of her breath. Buddy feels her own lungs seize up in sympathy.

“I’ve survived worse,” Vespa had said. Had just grit her teeth and shrugged it off, mere seconds after the knife had sliced through her skin. Buddy can see the evidence of that laid out before her, on the bareness of Vespa’s back--burn scars and shards of shrapnel, twisting distortions of scar tissue. Survived worse indeed. She hopes, though, that Vespa had not always had to mend such wounds alone, as she does now. Buddy wills herself not to stand and cross the room to offer her hands.

Instead, she sets aside the room service menu, as though she had actually given it a single glance. “Do you need any help with that, darling?” She keeps a careless air to her voice that she doesn’t feel.

A tense stillness comes over Vespa at Buddy’s words. She’d startled, the first time that Buddy had called her darling, and stammered, with a charming blush that Buddy holds dear in her memory. Buddy remembers, too, the first time Vespa heard her offer the same casual affection to a complete stranger. She’s spent too many nights contemplating Vespa’s expression in those brief seconds after--was it disappointment? Jealousy? Buddy has tried to reconstruct it, to puzzle out the nuances of her features so many times, late at night when she should be sleeping.

“I’m fine,” Vespa says, teeth bared in a frown as she pulls tight the next stitch.

“Are you--”

“Yeah,” Vespa cuts her off sharply. “I’m sure. You don’t have to sit around and watch.”

No, she doesn’t. There’s plenty to see in this city, even at this ungodly hour. She could go out exploring, or she could charm some beautiful woman in the hotel bar into spending the night with her, or she could go down to the lobby, where they’ll be meeting their employer tomorrow, and make sure they’ve a proper escape route if something goes wrong. But instead she finds herself rising from her bed and moving towards Vespa, who watches warily as she approaches.

Buddy has no plan, no intention but this gravitational pull she feels toward Vespa. She moves slowly, as if trying not to startle a frightened doe, and sets a gentle hand on Vespa’s back. Vespa shudders beneath her, and gasps in a way that all her sharp care with the needle hasn’t drawn from her, a soft little noise fleeing her throat. There’s still a lingering suspicion in her eyes, though, as she meets Buddy’s through the mirror, an indignant part to her lips as they search for words.

“Why--?”

Vespa doesn’t finish the question, and Buddy doesn’t try to explain, doesn’t say, _If I can’t offer you help, I can at least offer you comfort._ She only runs her hand over the scarred expanse of Vespa’s skin and watches as her eyes fall closed and her brow furrows with confusion, and she leans back, ever so slightly, into the warmth of her touch.

Vespa breathes a little more steadily as she finishes the stitches, but here, closer, Buddy can see the way she bites at her lip and the inside of her cheek every time the needle passes through her skin. Buddy lets her thumb skim across the curve between Vespa’s neck and shoulder each time she tenses. When Vespa ties off the last stitch, it seems to rend away her stiff composure, and she sags back against Buddy for a second as she sucks in a long, slow breath.

She turns around, then, still seated on the countertop, still with that sharp look of suspicion in her eyes.

Buddy says, airily, “I’ve arranged another job in the next star system over, two weeks from now. You wouldn’t be interested by any chance, would you?”

Vespa snorts. “No thanks. Wouldn’t be any use to you--this is gonna need a lot more than two weeks to heal.”

“Come with me anyway?”

Vespa laughs a little derisively.

Buddy pouts. “It gets lonely, traveling so much. Spending days on end in my spaceship, all alone. Hardly another soul even close enough for a comms signal to reach, can you imagine? Wouldn’t you want a little company?”

Vespa gives a withering stare. She knows all too well that Buddy is just a debonair con artist, that she can take someone in her hands and wring out anything she wants from them with just a word. She knows, and Buddy has nothing to offer on the contrary. For once, she doesn’t have the words she needs, the ones to convince Vespa that she wants nothing _from_ her, only her.

Vespa gingerly drops down from the countertop and goes over to her bed to wipe down the wound one more time and tape a bandage over it. She rifles through her suitcase one-handed until she pulls out a shirt, but she just scowls at it, seeming to balk at the idea of maneuvering her left arm through it to pull it over her head. Instead she just sits on the edge of the bed, shirt in her lap, hands twisted in the fabric of it. Buddy sits down beside her, and she shifts away, as if preemptively avoiding her touch. Buddy keeps her hands to herself.

“I’d hate for this to be the last time we work together. I meant what I said before; we really do make quite a pair,” Buddy says.

“Sure, when you’re not swindling my score off the mark’s finger.” Vespa speaks gruffly, but the corner of her lips twitches up into some approximation of a smile.

Buddy grins at the memory of their first meeting: a theft at a wedding, hired by opposite families to steal the groom’s engagement ring. Vespa, disguised as a wedding planner’s assistant, had spent all day running around the venue, waiting for the right moment to make off with the ring. Buddy, pretending to be just another wedding guest, had simply walked into his changing room, and with no more than a few sentences exchanged convinced him to give it to her. She’d winked at Vespa as she’d walked away, and disappeared, leaving Vespa to deal with the wedding in the aftermath.

“What the hell did you say to him, anyway?” Vespa asks. “You never told me.”

“Only that if he gave it to me, and told his family it had been stolen, I promised he and his husband would have a happy marriage.”

Vespa barks out a disbelieving laugh.

“The grooms’ families had been fighting over it for months,” Buddy explains. “If the ring went away, surely that argument would as well. And,” she says slyly, “if neither family ever received the ring, they’d never have any evidence to accuse each other of the crime.”

“You kept it.”

Buddy smiles, but doesn’t tell.

Vespa pulls the covers up and holds them to her chest, wincing as the movement pulls at the skin stretched tight around her stitches. “Should get some sleep before we meet our client tomorrow.”

“Yes I suppose so,” Buddy says. She gives a cursory glance to her own bed, but in the end only moves as far as the other side of Vespa’s. She lies on her side, on top of the covers, and it feels somehow as if they’re even closer than they’d been when they were touching.

Vespa takes a knife from the bedside table, slips it under her pillow, and settles her head atop it. “It’s habit more than distrust,” she says defensively, before Buddy can tease her about it.

Buddy nods, and slips her skirt up to show a tiny handgun holstered at her thigh. “I understand.” She looks down at her own weapon. “I’m afraid we’re not fairly matched, though.”

Vespa laughs. “Then you haven’t seen what I can do with a knife.”

Buddy grins. “Promise you’ll show me, one day?”

Vespa meets her eyes with a crooked smile. “Maybe. Ask me again tomorrow.”

“Alright.” Buddy pulls a pillow under her head and sinks into it, closing her eyes, her own bed--still neatly made--entirely forgotten. After a long, quiet moment, she asks, “Will you come with me?”

Vespa sighs and stares up at the ceiling. Then she closes her eyes, and pulls her left hand out from under the blankets, her brow knitted with the strain of it. She reaches out without looking, a hesitant offering. Buddy takes her hand.

“Ask me again tomorrow,” Vespa says once more.

And squeezing her hand, Buddy says, “I will.”


End file.
